Installing the Cabinets

If you recall, we donated our old cabinets to Habitat for Humanity, and they picked them up a couple of days before Christmas. So we had been without kitchen cabinets for over three months! With the kitchen walls plastered, we had to paint them so that we could finally take delivery of our cabinets.

Here's the color paint we decided on for the kitchen, dining room, and living room.

Paisley doesn't know what to think about the cabinet delivery.

That's a lot of boxes!

Did I mention that the appliances arrived shortly after the cabinets?

We originally had a deeper refrigerator, but Julie and Joe both recommended that we exchange it for a counter-depth refrigerator so that it wouldn't stick out too much past the counters.

That's not going to work! Guess we'll move the switches to the other side of the wall.

Going to have to cut the cabinet so that the microwave drawer will fit!

I had to install a couple of strips of the tongue & groove ceiling above the kitchen window so that I could hang the cabinets on that wall.

Yes, the television above the refrigerator is temporary.

The microwave fits in the cabinet after trimming a little off the left and right sides.

The new gas range plugged in temporarily since its dedicated outlet wasn't wired yet.

We saved a bunch of money again since I installed the cabinets myself. It's really not that difficult, as long as you can use a level, tape measure, drill, and screw gun. Empty cabinets are pretty light. It's not even that bad hanging the upper cabinets alone because of the temporary boards that you tack to the wall to rest the cabinet on while screwing them in. Hang the upper cabinets before installing the base cabinets. The wires sticking out under the cabinets will be for hard-wired under-cabinet lighting, which will all be controlled with a single switch.

These pictures take us through the very beginning of May. Note that we finally had to remove the old sink so that we could install the base cabinets in preparation for the template for the counters. Stay tuned for the next update!

Dry-walling the Kitchen

In my last blog post, I said I was overdue, but it's been over three months (May) since I've updated this blog. And the pictures from that post were three months prior to that (February)! Fear not--there has been a lot of work going on at the house! Since I have some catching up to do, this post will contain pictures from as far back as March. Then I'll have to do some more posts to get caught up.

Had to open up some of the old drywall to run wiring for the under-cabinet lights and range hood.

How about that spice rack?

Color samples taped to the kitchen wall.

So much work left to do!

Back to dry-walling--old and new.

Ready for the plasterers!

I hung the drywall myself, which wasn't bad. The 4'x8' sheets just fit, width-wise, in the back of the Durango and only hung out a few inches, so I just had to tie down the tailgate. After watching some YouTube videos on plastering, I decided that it would be worth hiring professionals. Our kitchen designer, Joe Ricardi, had told us that he would send his plastering crew if we wanted, and he gave us a great deal. Well worth it! Camille and his assistant came out and plastered the kitchen in half a day. They did a great job!

Glad we decided to hire professional plasterers!

Plastering in progress.

Kitchen plastered!

Plaster dried.

Getting there!

Stay tuned. The next post will be coming soon!